AHA

>> Monday, April 20, 2009

My BCS-460 HERMS is fully functional. I brewed my first batch on it on 4/25 and everything went fairly well. The only problem I had was for mash out I'm raising the temp from the mash temperature (in this case 158 F) to 168 F. I was able to raise the temp over a period of about 10 minutes. Then I swapped hoses and routed the sparge water through the HEX. The problem was the temp of the HEX was actually higher than the 168 from heating the mash, so my sparge water was getting heated to approx 172. No problem, I just removed the copper coil from the HEX and the temp dropped to 168. I think next time I'll either reduce the temp of the HEX during mashout or I'll reduce the temp of the sparge water in the HLT.

Anyway, here are some pics I took during the inaugural brew session and also a few I took during construction. The quality isn't all that great in some. For the brew session I brewed indoors due to bad weather so the lighting isn't all that great.